I’m attempting, once again, to have plants in my home. I live in an apartment, but I have lots of windows (most facing NW). I bought one of those little “herb garden starters kits” a while ago. Now I have thriving plants of basil, marjoram, chamomile, chives and curled parsley. I also have one of those winow box planters for my window.
So which, if any, of these can I put together in that winowbox? This is an indoor box, so none of my plants will be outdoor plants. These plants are also very tiny, having been started from seed. None of them will be “harvestable” for a while, I think but I’d like to keep them thriving.
They can all go in the same box. There are some plants (mostly trees and desert plants) that engage in a sort of chemical warfare to inhibit the growth of competitors, but herbs are not among them. Most herbs also do well in strong light and so most will have similar cultural requirements.
All your herbs (except the chives) can get quite large, so I would simply divide the box in thirds and plant each in the middle of its own space. The chives can be planted around the edges.
There are a number of veggies that can do well in an indoor garden too. Radishes, short carrots and all sorts of leaf lettuces and spinach can be grown in window boxes.
Radishes in particular grow quite quickly and can be sown in the spaces between your plants while the herbs are still young and you should be able to harvest a quick crop of radishes before the herbs overshadow them.
A friend of mine describes his mother having planted mint and oregano close together one year in her garden, and the oregano apparently turned into a vile amalgam of mint and oregano, at least to the taste. Your mix sounds like it should all be OK in one large container, though.
Mint is something my mother impressed upon me at a very young age to always grow in a pot. It takes over everything. What we didn’t know was that oregano seems to do the same thing. Now her herb garden in the front yard seems to be oregano with chives sticking thorough it in one area.
As for the idea of growing other salad makings in my home, daffyduck, my heart’s all a’twitter. I love spinach, and had no idea I could grow it indoors.
I’d give chives a pot of it’s own, because it tends to spread rapidly and could swamp out the others. I’d put basil and parsley in a pot together because they’re grown as annuals; the others I’d put together in whatever arrangement is convenient.
Although mint and oregano are related, I don’t think they’re close enough to form a chimaera, or even hybridise (which would only become noticeable in plants grown from seed they produced anyway).
What is most likely to have happened in your friend’s mother’s case (assuming no fabrication is involved) is that both the mint and the oregano were smothered by some weed that superficially resembled them both - another plant in the labiatae perhaps - such as bugle or deadnettle.
So, Mangetout, you’re saying plant the chamomile and marjoram or the basil and parsley in the window box, the chives by themselves and another box for the other set?
I was kind of hoping to put more of these guys together, but it wouldn’t be hard to just have a bunch of pots in the window, rather than one box.
If it’s a long, rectangular window box, you could plant the chives in a pot, then sink the pot into the window box soil, to restrict their invasive growth habit - remembering to water inside the rim of the pot when you water the rest of the box, especially if it’s a plastic pot.
Having said all that, there’s nothing to stop you growing any of these things together in any combination you desire; plenty of people do that with great success; removing the remnants of annuals from a pot of perennials can be a hassle, but this isn’t all that likely with basil and parsley. Removing invasive perennials that become intermixed with other plants can be a bit more labour-intensive, but that’s gardening for you…
